It's plum season!

Plums are one of my favorite fruits, and I eagerly look forward to their arrival every year. Related to cherries and peaches, around here, plums arrive after cherries are over, just before peaches are really going strong. This usually happens sometime in late July-August, depending on the variety. Here, that tends to overlap with blackberry season, more or less.

There are tons of species of plums that grow very happily in Oregon, and luckily lots of people plant them ornamentally as street/yard trees, so there's tons of free plums for the asking. On a casual walk around town, you can easily find European plums, Japanese plums, and Damson-type plums growing in yards, alleys, and along streets.

A neighborhood walking inventory reveals that we have several of the small, sour Japanese plums; a few Greengage plum trees with greenish, custardy tasting plums; a guy down the street has a "yellow egg" plum (very tasty), several Italian Prune plums (also decent fresh), and a Santa Rosa (the red kind you see at the store).

Fortunately we have a good climate for plums here, so there's few problems or issues with disease and splitting due to too much rain. During most years, you can find plenty. We happen to live in one of the states where commercial plums are produced, so numerous varieties are available. If you get out into the wild a bit, you can even find the wild native varieties, some of which are edible.

Finding a plum tree for your free picking pleasure is pretty easy. In many cities they are planted as street trees and are very common. Often, you can find them in parking lots, if nothing else. In the spring, the bloom profusely like cherries, only a bit earlier. Shape-wise, many of the Japanese plums resemble cherries, but they often have purplish leaves, making them easy to identify. European plums are a bit trickier because they're larger and more erect than Japanese plums, but you can often identify them by their blooms, which come much later than Japanese types. Luckily, the plums themselves are very easy to spot on European plums, unlike Japanese varieties that hide inconspicuously under the camouflage of the leaves.

Japanese plums ripen the earliest, and the European prune & canning varieities ripen later in autumn (after the school year is underway). Because Japanese plums set a lot of fruit, they usually drop tons of it on the ground, which makes it easy to find a tree. One thing you may notice about them is they don't fruit consistently every year. Usually one year is a "heavy" year (where the tree produces tons of plums), and the next a "light" (or non-fruiting year, where few to no plums are produced). Be aware that there are some trees are strictly ornamental (and will never fruit), but most varieties, even those labeled as "ornamental" will produce some fruit, some years, during the course of their lives (thus annoying people who want "landscape" trees but don't really want any fruit). Luckily for the rest of us, this handily ensures there's plenty of unwanted fruit to be had. This also means that if you've spotted a likely tree, and it appears to be a dud, you should try again next year.

Plums are some of the most tolerant of trees, so they can be grown almost anywhere, hence their popularity in the landscape and as a street tree. We're lucky enough to be far enough north to grow both European plums and Japanese plums, so in Oregon, you often will be able to find a source for both types. You can tell that the fruit is ready to pick when it is fairly dark in color (for purple varieties) and is no longer hard as a rock. Ripe plums have a bit of soft squeeze (or give) to the flesh, so you can test them by squeezing them lightly. If you pick them before they're ripe, they're usually very sour, but some people (especially Guatemalans) seem to prefer them this way. Regardless of whether you prefer sweet or sour, they're usually easy to pick. Most plum trees aren't very tall. The branches aren't as fragile as cherries, so you can usually pull them downward without them snapping on you. Sometimes, you can simply pick them up off the ground (if they haven't split on the way down).

Most plums are best eaten fresh. If you pick them yourself, they won't be rock hard (like the ones you would buy in the store), and are usually very juicy and sweet. I often just walk around the neighborhood and graze on them, a few at a time. European plums have wide variety of culinary uses. I am perfectly happy eating them fresh, but you can also dry them (prunes), or cook them (canned plums, jelly, or plum compote is pretty good). For beverage use, you could make plum brandy or umeshu.

Happy picking!